Demographic events and economic conditions of rural households in Bangladesh

Demographic events, such as death of adults and marriage of children, place a heavy burden on household economy, while economic and labour migration may lessen the burden. This study examined the effects of demographic events on economic condition of rural households in Bangladesh. Household possessions of durable assets in the Matlab demographic surveillance area in 1996 and 2005 were used to calculate asset scores, a proxy for long-term economic condition. Events of adult (aged 15–59 years) death and marriage of girls during 1996–2005 were associated with lower asset scores in 2005 compared to households with no such events. Out-migration of adult males, but not females, to urban areas or other countries and marriage of boys were associated with higher asset scores in 2005 compared to households with no out-migration or boy's marriage. Findings suggest that the government should attach high priority to adult health, abolition of dowry, and encourage out-migration.     

Honouring Saint Louis in a small town

The cult of Saint Louis of France has traditionally been regarded as largely limited to royal shrines and aristocratic patronage, but two documents published here provide some tentative evidence that patronage may have been wider. Evidence of this sort may be rare not because non-aristocratic patronage was rare but because so few records of parish church endowments have survived.     

Squatting Social Centres in a Sicilian City: Liberated Spaces and Urban Protest Actors

The Social Centres in Italy are simultaneously “liberated spaces”, empty and unused large buildings squatted by groups of radical left/antagonist activists to self‐manage social and countercultural activities, and “political contentious places”. They are indeed urban but not only local protest actors, denouncing the scarcity of spaces of sociability outside of commercial circuits, campaigning against market‐oriented urban renewal, property speculation, and on other anti‐capitalistic issues addressed outside the occupied spaces. The long history of Social Centres in Catania, the second largest city of Sicily, is reconstructed and explained through the choices and actions made by the squatters/activists, depending on their political‐ideological orientation, on the one hand; and by the opportunities and constraints of the specific political and socio‐spatial structure, which they had to face, on the other. The Social Centres, CPO Experia, CSOA Guernica, CSA Auro, and more recently CSO Liotru, are the main analysed empirical cases.     

Geomagnetic field variations as a dating tool: Application to Sicilian lavas

Over 40 historically dated Mt Etna lava flows have been carefully sampled for the purpose of palaeomagnetic analysis. The natural remanent magnetization (NRM) of each lava flow contains a record of both the magnitude and direction of the Earth's magnetic field at the time of its eruption. Our analysis has thus enabled us to determine the change of the magnetic field in Sicily through historic times and to construct curves which show this secular variation of the field in both direction and magnitude. In this paper, the curves are used to reconsider the historical dates attributed to a number of Etna lavas, dates which had since been questioned by recent palaeomagnetic and geological studies. In a similar manner, these secular variation curves can be used as a powerful archaeological dating tool by comparison with the NRM of fired artifacts.     

The pentiti of the Sicilian mafia in the 1930s

Mussolini had declared that Fascism, through the anti-mafia campaign entrusted to Cesare Mori, prefect of Palermo, in the second half of the 1920s, had conclusively liberated Sicily from the mafia. However, from the early 1930s a new deterioration of public order on the island was evident, and the regime was forced to launch a second, and much less publicised, repression of this phenomenon. In the course of its careful investigations the body given responsibility for pursuing this repression, the Ispettorato Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza per la Sicilia, compiled a series of reports, including the Processo verbale di denunzia relating to the area around Palermo. With a level of detail never seen before, these reports described the structure, organisation and dynamics of mafia groups. This was possible because police officers had available members of the mafia groups themselves – genuine pentiti – who had decided to make disclosures to the authorities.     

Demographic transformation processes in Bulgaria

"The economic transformation [in Bulgaria] since 1989 led to severe economic and social problems. The population development under these conditions was marked by a falling birth rate. In 1990, for the first time, there was no increase in population. As a result of the long-term tendency towards a drop in the birth rate and an increase in mortality, Bulgaria suffered a loss in population of 3,000 people in 1990. Between 1989 and 1994 approximately 550,000 people left Bulgaria; approximately 78% of these were under the age of 45. The main reasons for this wave of emigration can be found in the high level of unemployment and in the social and economic instability of the country. The outmigration had considerable effects on the falling birth rate." (SUMMARY IN ENG AND RUS)     

The campus as a public space in the American college town

With its concert halls, museums, sports stadiums, landscaped grounds, and busy calendars of events, the college campus is a hub of activities that serves not only students and staff, but the larger population of a town and region. As such, the campus serves as both an environment for learning and a public space. This is especially true of campuses located outside big cities, because metropolitan institutions often face significant security concerns and demand for their facilities. Campuses in small cities, in contrast, tend to be open and inviting, and help to make the college town a distinctive type of urban place. This study will examine the multifaceted role of the campus, using the University of Oklahoma campus as an example, as a way to demonstrate the centrality of the campus to college town life.     

Demographic transition theory: a neglected aspect of the nomadism-sedentarism continuum

This paper proposes an adaptation of demographic transition theory to the nomadism-sedentarism continuum. It is argued that a change along this continuum implies a change in the mode of production, which in turn entails changes in fertility and mortality. The following hypotheses are set forth: 1) at the pastoral phase of a nomadic society, fertility is relatively low and mortality is relatively high, yielding a low rate of natural increase; 2) as a pastoral nomadic society senentarizes, fertility begins to rise and mortality falls, resulting in a sharp rise in natural increase, but as sedentarization becomes more advanced, both these trends slow down somewhat; 3) as the nomadic society becomes fully sedentarized, there is a period in which fertility remains at a high level but then begins to fall slowly, whereas mortality, after reaching a temporary minimum, exhibits a minor increase followed by a resumption of a declining trend; and 4) in the postsedentarization phase, the demographic regime of the ex-nomads becomes similar to the 2nd and 3rd stages of the original demographic transition theory, with a slowdown of the decline in mortality, followed by a later slowdown of fertility and of the rate of natural increase. The hypothesis of rising fertility among sedentarizing nomads is related to both social modernization and economic growth and development, including an improved standard of living and public health services. The interrelated processes of general societal responses to population growth and the changing role of children in the family are assumed to account for the eventual fertility decline. Data from several countries, including a case history from Israel, suggest that birth rates increase along the continuum but their decline at postsedentarization will depend on trends in the general rural sector. Natural increase rates of sedentarizing nomads are considerably higher than those of pastoral nomads. It is concluded that this approach may fill a gap in demographic transition theory and provide a conceptual framework for future studies.     

The politics of town planning in post-war Naples

The article examines town planning in the city of Naples since the war and, in ­particular, the ambiguous relations between politicians and policy. The focus of the analysis highlights the failure to give effect to the various master plans (PRG) ­discussed and sometimes adopted by the city authorities. This explains to a large extent the widespread building speculation that occurred in these years.     

Women drinking alcohol: assembling a perspective from a Victorian country town,Australia

Gender is a key lens for interpreting meanings and practices of drinking. In response to the overwhelming amount of social and medical alcohol studies that focus on what extent people conform to norms of healthy drinking, this article extends critical feminist geographical engagement with assemblage thinking to explore how the technologies of biopower covertly materialised as bodily habits may be preserved and challenged. We suggest an embodied engagement with alcohol to help think through the gendered practices and spatial imaginaries of rural drinking life. Our account draws on interviews with women of different cohort generations with Anglo-Celtic ancestry living in a country town in Victoria, Australia. Three vignettes based around emergent themes of maternal, domicile and socialising bodies help shed light on the contradictory ways gender is lived through the dynamics of alcohol consumption which help constitute everyday life in a country town.     

Contemporary rural imitation: a Tardean analysis of five Danish rural parishes

The objective of the article was to update Tarde's approach by directing attention to the rural space and the concept of rural imitation. It analyses an empirical study of people settling in five Danish rural areas using Tarde's key concepts of imitation and monads. Mixed methods were employed, including surveys, participant observation and photo-ethnographic interviews. The data analysis applied the grounded theory approach to add a structural dimension to Tarde's approach. The analysis revealed that Tarde's approach and his key concepts of imitation and monads can be used to develop contemporary perspectives on rural experiences. The pivotal point in the rural–urban relationship is the ability to be in contact with an identity constructed from decisions about specific emotional states and a sense of the present. Within a broader perspective, this view of identity building based on rural settlement in nature calls for attention to health studies regarding how nature is associated with coping and how it can help relieve stress, one of contemporary society's most common ailments. The analysis suggests the existence of a triangle of monads in contemporary rural imitation. This triangle of monads is what stabilises, reproduces and supports the creation of rural identities.     

美国殖民地时期的人口变动及其意义

关于美国殖民地时期人口问题的研究,由于深受统计数据稀缺的制约,美国学术界在很长时期内不是视为畏途,就是加以忽略。自20世纪60年代以来,受年鉴学派和剑桥英国人口史和社会结构研究小组的学术成就的刺激,美国学利用容种分散的社区记录、家庭帐册和遗嘱等材料,借助欧洲学摸索出来的研究方法和规范,